Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993 TAG: 9302240244
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
OH, THE THINGS I HAD TO DO . . .
The second-to-worst moment came just before takeoff.The runway was a grassy hillside.
The airplane was a Cessna, an old, stripped-down Cessna with one seat - which was occupied by the pilot.
I was not the pilot. I was a half-starved free-lance writer.
In those days - the first year of the New River Current's existence - there was a great demand for half-starved free-lance writers.
We were cheap, for one thing. And we were willing.
The regular staff generally was neither.
Understand that in 1988, the Current's early deadline - a day early - pretty much ruled out news as we know it.
When news happened, if it was urgent enough, it went into the rest of the newspaper - known as the mainsheet. (Today, the Current has much later deadlines that allow breaking news to be included in the section.)
In the Current, meanwhile, there were features. Lots of features. Which are known as fluff.
Real reporters - the ones with journalism degrees on their walls and flaming swords in their hands - dislike fluff. They prefer to write about politicians and murderers and such.
That left the fluff for us.
And there were a lot of us free-lancers in the early days. Housewives, college students, retirees, unpublished novelists (at least two of those) and other angels and misfits, most of them long since gone.
I arrived late that year, on a hot day in August, hoping to get a few free-lance assignments from editor Chuck Burress to help pay the rent while I worked on other, unremunerative projects of my own.
I was soon doing things I'd never dreamed of.
Riding down the New River in a bateau. Flying in flimsy aircraft. Scuba diving beneath the Peppers Ferry Bridge.
Not every assignment was risky, of course.
Among the fluff I wrote in those lean days (I survived for nine months solely on free-lance work for the Roanoke Times & World-News, for which, though I hate to admit it, I owe the newspaper a debt of gratitude) were plenty of stories about dress designers and university professors and pizza makers.
Backstreets Pizza used 3 1/2 tons of flour every two weeks, and was capable of cranking out 660 pizzas in an hour, I discovered in 1988.
Readers of the Current discovered it, too.
But editor Burress also liked to take a walk on the wild side now and then - so long as someone else did the walking. He usually chose me.
I remember the search for the 6-foot fish.
This freak was said to prowl the New River beneath the Peppers Ferry Bridge. Scuba divers had seen him.
Well, one scuba diver had seen him. A soft-spoken scuba instructor named Dianne Wall - now Dianne Bourne - of the New River Valley Scuba Center.
She said it was a muskie.
Now, the muskie (or muskellunge), is a member of the pike family. And the pike is a surly fish - a sort of L.A. Raider of the freshwater world, bristling with teeth and spite.
The prospect of meeting one my size, on his turf, was unsettling.
But I did have rent to pay.
So I took scuba lessons. And on a cold Saturday morning in November, I inched into the muddy river with Wall/Bourne and a few other divers, and swam down to the bottom.
I didn't see him. The muskie.
Really, I didn't see much. Some big dim shapes I took to be the other scuba divers. Some rocks. Some truck tires. A few fish. Small fish.
I finally emerged, clammy and grateful - and later wrote a 40-inch story about scuba diving and the fish I never found.
The rent got paid.
The water, metaphorically speaking, just got deeper.
I remember - as my guts heave - the Experimental Aircraft Association.
There were a score or so EAA members in the New River Valley in 1988. They built airplanes in their rec rooms that looked like exotic insects, or restored old Pipers and Cessnas that had sat for years in barns.
EAA members actually flew these things. They insisted they were safe.
I took a ride with them once in an old Piper Cub. A Piper Cub is about the size of a box of Keebler crackers. My left shoulder was crushed against the pilot, a big friendly guy whose name I don't remember. My right shoulder was mashed into the cabin wall.
Abruptly, somewhere above the Blue Ridge, I began to feel sick. And faint. My palms were damp. I couldn't speak. I expected to die.
Nothing happened, of course. In hindsight, I think some unhealed psychological wound was to blame for my nausea. A memory of fear in a Cessna.
Four years and four months later, I can recall the fear.
It was a pretty Saturday. I sat on the hard floor facing the back of the cabin, where four members of the Burnt Chimney Skydivers rested on their knees.
The skydivers were to jump into Lane Stadium during halftime of the Virginia-Virginia Tech football game a few weeks later. The Current editor wanted a feature in advance.
I did not intend to jump.
Not that morning, not ever. Breathing underwater is one thing. Jumping out of airplanes is another. I meant to watch.
It was Indian summer, and warm. As the airplane picked up speed I could feel the gopher holes in my teeth.
The aforementioned second-to-worst moment arrived.
"Let's open the door," said one of the skydivers as the airplane strained toward flight. I don't think he was kidding. "Enjoy the breeze."
The door was right beside me.
The blood drained from my face.
Thankfully, the pilot must have noticed, because he shook his head "No."
The airplane left the ground. For long minutes we climbed, circling and circling.
Finally, the engine changed pitch and the Cessna slowed down, way up among the clouds.
The big door was flung open beside me. The sky roared. The skydivers climbed over me and dropped from sight.
The worst moment came.
"Can you see them?" the pilot asked. And, thoughtfully, banked the plane!
I hung there above the open door - above two miles of cloud-streaked nothing - restrained from sliding right on out only by my seat belt.
It should be noted that I was wearing an old Army parachute, at the skydivers' insistence.
I also note it gave me no comfort.
"Can you see them now?" the pilot asked.
I looked as if my life depended on it. I believed it did. Somewhere very far away, I think, were four tiny dots in the sky. I wouldn't swear to it.
"I see them," I said.
The plane leveled out again.
A few months later my career did, too.
And if I had sense, I wouldn't miss those days a bit.
But I do.